When the vehicle suffers a small overlap crash against a barrier (or an object), the barrier falls outside a shock absorbing structure in the front of the vehicle. As a result, impact energy cannot be easily controlled, and a cabin is largely deformed narrowing the seating space. To overcome such problem, the following technique is proposed, for example, in JP 2015-58793 A (Patent Document 1). That is, a projecting member having an obliquely extending front surface is attached to respective outer surfaces of side frames, by which the force (crash force) generated upon collision between the projecting member and a barrier is utilized to push the vehicle body sideways and keep the body away from the barrier.
In the technique proposed in Patent Document 1, crash force deforms the side frames and a power unit receives the crash force. With this configuration, the crash force is weakened due to the deformation of the side frames. If the crash force is weakened, the force of pushing the vehicle sideways is also weakened, and the vehicle may possibly not get away from the barrier.